Thursday, August 6, 2015

Will Post-Lucchino Red Sox Be Analytics-Free?

Crane (L), Henry (R)

There's been a lot of talk about which direction Red Sox baseball operations will take in the Post-Larry Lucchino Era. Matthew Kory of FanGraphs.com suggests that Lucchino's departure offers Boston an opportunity to move in a different philosophical direction—although he admits that might not be the right thing to do. So, would John Henryreally consider abandoning the "analytics" philosophy that broke The Curse and delivered three rings in ten years? Let's remember who this Henry character is—aside from being a dead ringer for the Washington Irving character Ichabod Crane. Henry is a commodities-trading geek, who developed a mechanical, "emotion-free" system of analyzing stock trends. Does this sound like a guy who's going to abandon baseball analytics and move to the "gut analysis" approach? Not bloody likely! Look for any Lucchino replacement to be of the new breed—like a J.P. Ricciardi. Or, he might even steal Jed Hoyer away from Theo Epstein.

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